Bongo Nat

A desktop pet that bonks along to your keyboard and mouse input — a mashup of Bongo Cat on Steam and NAT, the beloved mascot of the student society ITK. NAT exists in many variations, where often the origin of these variations is a pun (like Bongo Nat)!

Bongo Nat sits on top of all your windows as a small, transparent overlay. Every time you press a key or click a mouse button (anywhere on the system), nat bonks its paws. A lifetime bonk counter keeps track of how hard you've been working.

Built with Tauri, SvelteKit and Rust.

Features

• Global input detection — reacts to every keypress and mouse click system-wide, not just inside the app window.
• Always-on-top transparent overlay — a borderless, draggable nat that floats above everything else.
• Bonk counter — tracks your total bonks across sessions.
• Custom bongo versions — drop your own sprite sets into the bongo-versions folder and switch between them from the tray menu. Each version is a folder containing idle.png, left.png and right.png.
• System tray integration — all options are accessible by right-clicking the tray icon:
  • Bongo Version — switch between the built-in default and any custom versions you've added.
  • Open Versions Folder — opens the directory where you can add new bongo versions.
  • Show Background — toggles a circular background behind nat.
  • Visit GitHub page — opens the project repository in your browser.
  • Quit — exits the application.
• Cross-platform — runs on Linux, Windows and macOS.

Adding Custom Versions

1. Right-click the tray icon and select Open Versions Folder.
2. Create a new subfolder (the folder name will appear in the menu).
3. Place three PNG images inside it: idle.png, left.png, right.png.
4. Restart Bongo Nat.
5. Right-click the tray icon → Bongo Version → select your new version.

Known Issues

• Sprites appear stacked on top of each other — this can happen when the transparent window doesn't render correctly on some systems. To fix it, right-click the tray icon and enable Show Background. This adds a visible background behind nat which resolves the rendering issue.
• Keypresses or mouse clicks are not always detected — global input listening relies on low-level system hooks that may not work on all platforms or desktop environments.